Republican Never Trump Candidates Fold at the Starting Gate

Asa Hutchinson: now gone and soon to be forgotten. Photo: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In what might have been the defining moment of the 2024 Republican presidential-nominating contest, during the very first debate last August, the candidates were asked if they would back Donald Trump as the GOP nominee even if he’s a convicted criminal. Six of them (Doug Burgum, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott) raised their hands to signify they would still back him. Two candidates, Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, did not, thus identifying themselves as the candidates of Never Trump Republicans, the noisy and media-influencing faction you’d figure would have grown in size and power as the 45th president began collecting felony indictments like the mob boss he so completely resembles.

Christie dropped out of the race on January 11 after stubbornly denying for months that he was just helping his nemesis by splitting the non-Trump vote in the one state (New Hampshire) where he had gotten any traction. Hutchinson finally dropped out after finishing a really poor sixth in Iowa, well behind the nationally unknown Texas pastor Ryan Binkley. It was a pretty sad end for the candidacy of a former governor and congressman but a good sign of the limited constituency for his views. Indeed, you could argue that Hutchinson and Christie didn’t accomplish any more than a third anti-Trump candidate, Will Hurd, who quit the race last October.

Hurd promptly endorsed Haley, saying she “has shown a willingness to articulate a different vision for the country than Donald Trump and has an unmatched grasp on the complexities of our foreign policy.”

Christie and Hutchinson haven’t taken that step yet. It’s possible Christie never will, after essentially calling Haley a coward in his withdrawal statement and predicting on a hot mic that she would “get smoked” by Trump. But it’s likely their Never Trump followers will drift into the South Carolinian’s camp; a New Hampshire poll showed 65 percent of Christie voters backing Haley if he were to drop out. I mean, what else are they going to do? DeSantis, whose candidacy is really hanging by a thread, has spent the past year trying to out-Trump Trump. Haley is more or less trying to bring back pre-Trump movement conservatism (itself pretty extreme) with a few cruel touches, such as her support for hunting down and deporting every undocumented immigrant.

Still, it has to be galling for Never Trump Republicans to settle for a candidate who could quite possibly wind up as Trump’s running mate. Haley might never babble about the Boss’s “broad shoulders” the way Pence did, and he might still privately call her “Bird Brain.” But it tells you a lot about the current state of the Republican Party that, so early in the nomination process, a heavily indicted insurrectionist is on the brink of winning it all, with someone like Haley, who has promised to support him in November come hell or high water, as his only real obstacle.

Never Trump Republicans really ought to think about finding a different political party. The present and future GOP is just not theirs.